


like the hammer loves the nail

by dreamtiwasanarchitect



Category: Trust (TV 2018)
Genre: Age Difference, Drinking, Drug Use, Dry Humping, Dysfunctional Relationships, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Medium Burn, Oral Sex, Poor Life Choices, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stockholm Syndrome But Make It Later, Unsafe Sex, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:28:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28330158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamtiwasanarchitect/pseuds/dreamtiwasanarchitect
Summary: Never mind that Paul’s back in Italy—stranded there, after the film he was scheduled to start shooting was abruptly canceled—and his wife and ten-month-old son are in California. Hell, Getty Sr. might not even know about Paul’s little family.And if he does know, he certainly doesn’t care.So Paul spends the rest of the little money he had with him on a variety of fine white powders, then, once he’s seeing colors that aren’t there and all the shapes around him have gone fuzzy, he pays a cab driver an exorbitant sum to take him to Reggio Calabria.
Relationships: John Paul Getty III/Primo Nizzuto, Leonardo/Primo Nizzuto (Implied)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 57





	1. heavy and hard

Almost two years later, the old man still won’t take his call. 

Never mind that Paul’s back in Italy—stranded there, after the film he was scheduled to start shooting was abruptly canceled—and his wife and ten-month-old son are in California. Hell, Getty Sr. might not even know about Paul’s little family.

And if he does know, he certainly doesn’t care.

Paul’s out of options. He and his mother fought last month—their relationship was already strained from his kidnapping, his marriage, his move, and when he told her he was leaving his family to come work on a movie, she’d made her feelings about it perfectly clear. He can’t call her. And his dad has never been an option.

So Paul spends the rest of the little money he had with him on a variety of fine white powders, then, once he’s seeing colors that aren’t there and all the shapes around him have gone fuzzy, he pays a cab driver an exorbitant sum to take him to Reggio Calabria. 

The man looks at him like he’s crazy—and the man’s not wrong—but Paul is too high to care. He sinks into the backseat, watching the scenery pass by, plagued by the thought that he’s been here before, but he doesn’t recognize any of it. 

Some time later, Paul wakes with his face pressed against the cab window. He can’t remember falling asleep. The driver is shouting at him. He stumbles out of the taxi, wondering what the fuck he’s done. A quick pat of his pockets reveals he doesn’t have money to get back to Rome (and in fact, he has no money whatsoever), but he does still have a decent amount of mysterious white powder. 

He puts a little on his finger and sucks it into his nose, then he does it again, and again, until he’s high enough that he’s no longer worried about being back in this little village where he had his ear sliced off, with no money, only the clothes on his back. 

Paul wanders, takes in the sights. Lots of houses have little sheds next to them, housing for sheep and goats and pigs. He remembers running between these buildings—or if not these specific buildings, buildings that were interchangeable, almost identical—with Angelo, a near-stranger he’d felt more kinship with than most of his family.

It’s growing late, the day fading to dusk, and Paul can see just a way up ahead that there’s a little bar with all the lights still on, full of people and noise. 

He goes inside. It might be a bad choice, but what choice does he really have? There’s nowhere else for him to go.

He feels every eye (not that there are really that many—maybe twenty pairs) turn to him. He doesn’t have a plan when he slinks up to the bar and slides onto one of the stools. It’s a good thing, then, what happens next.

———

Leonardo is killing time, sharing drinks and cigarettes with Fabrizio and Vittorio as he waits for seven o’clock, when he and Francesco will meet at the car to head back to their new house in Gioia Tauro. Neither man has much to say that’s of interest to Leonardo, but he listens politely, until a tall, wiry figure almost trips over its own feet as it enters the bar.

For a moment, Leonardo thinks he has gone insane, that possibly all the guilt he’s tried to ignore for the better part of his life has manifested in a new, terrifying way, but then he notices everyone else is staring, too.

He hasn’t gone mad. It’s the Getty boy, back in Reggio Calabria. 

Slowly, the men turn to him, their silent gazes almost accusing. _You’re the only reason this boy even knows this place exists_ , their eyes tell Leonardo. _This is your problem._

“Excuse me,” Leonardo mutters to Fabrizio and Vittorio. He throws some money on the table and walks to Paul as quickly as he can while trying not to look too panicked, or at least not as panicked as he feels.

He wraps a hand around the boy’s bicep, and Paul looks up at him, and Leonardo sees that he must be high out of his mind, which at least goes part of the way in explaining what the fuck he’s doing here. 

Paul’s eyes are almost black. “You,” he says, and he sounds—almost excited, a little happy.

“What are you doing here?” Leonardo demands, giving him a little shake.

“I still have it,” Paul says, words slurring together, and Leonardo has no idea what he’s on about, until Paul plunges a hand down his shirt and pulls up a necklace—a pendant, the St. Christopher Leonardo gave him, what was it, almost two years ago now?

“Mamma mia,” Leonardo says under his breath. “Come with me.”

He pulls Paul along and gets no resistance. At the car, Leonardo checks his watch. Five ’til seven—if Francesco leaves his friends on time, which is unlikely, he’ll be here any minute.

Leonardo relaxes his grip, and Paul half-slumps over the hood of the car. 

“What are you doing, Paul?” he asks again.

Paul just stares. Slowly, he raises a hand and rubs it over the place where his ear would be. Leonardo wants to look away, feels like it’s the only right thing to do, but his gaze catches on the scarred nothingness.

“Paul,” he says again. “Tell me, what are you doing here, huh?”

Paul blinks. “Dunno,” he says slowly, like he’s just realizing it.

“You need to go, get out of here,” Leonardo tells him.

“Can’t. No money.”

Leonardo wills himself to think, and to think fast, but he’s at a loss—he has no idea what to do about this.

But then, he supposes he might know someone who will.

He checks his watch again, then walks around the car to open the trunk. “Get in,” he says, motioning Paul forward. “Hurry, hurry.”

He’s almost surprised when Paul does move toward him of his own volition, takes a few fumbling steps before Leonardo can help him into the trunk, where he curls up without protest. 

Leonardo closes it and looks at his watch again. Less than a minute later, Francesco rounds the corner of his friend Andre’s house. 

“Right on time,” he tells his son, forcing a smile, and he spends the twenty-minute drive home listening to Francesco talk about his friends. He spares a guilty thought for Paul, once again shoved into a trunk, but looking at Francesco, all innocent obliviousness, he doesn’t regret the decision.

“I need to drop something by the port office,” Leonardo says when he pulls up to their house. “Go on, tell your mother not to wait on me for dinner.”

Francesco gives him a searching look. “She’s going be mad, papa.”

Leonardo sighs. “I know, but tell her it’s important business. She will understand.”

“If it’s important, can I help?”

“No,” Leonardo says quickly. “Go on, your mother went to the trouble of cooking. Eat a serving for me.”

With a sigh packed as full of teenage disdain as Francesco can manage, he gets out of the car and heads inside. Leonardo waits until the door is shut behind him before taking off again.

He considers the port office, but then he thinks Primo is marginally more likely to be home right now. A minute later, he’s on Primo’s step, unleashing all of the anxiety he’s been holding for the last half hour on Primo’s door as he smacks his palm against it.

The lock turns, and Primo is there, one hand in his jacket, curled around a gun, which he lets drop when he’s satisfied it’s just Leonardo. 

“We have a problem,” Leonardo tells him. 

Primo looks more interested than anything else, and follows silently as Leonardo runs to his trunk. 

“Need help burying a body, old man?” Primo asks, lips curling in a grin. 

Leonardo stares at him. “I don’t know,” he says heavily, and opens the trunk. Paul is still curled up, but now he appears to be passed out.

“What the fuck is this,” Primo says.

Leonardo explains what little he can as Primo stares down at Paul, expression frighteningly blank.

“I didn’t know what to do—I don’t know what to do,” Leonardo admits.

Primo grabs Paul underneath his arms. “Get him in the house,” he orders, and Leonardo has no better ideas, so he takes Paul’s legs, and together they bring him inside and lay him out on Primo’s couch. He’s barely moved.

“Has he overdosed, do you think?” Leonardo asks. 

Primo puts a finger on Paul’s neck, feels for a pulse. “Maybe,” he says, and he sounds supremely unconcerned with that possibility. He pulls back an eyelid and peers at it. “I don’t think so.”

“So what do we do?”

Primo drums his fingers on his thigh. “We wait until he wakes up. And we ask him what the fuck he’s doing here.”

“How long will that be?”

Primo shrugs a shoulder and lights a cigarette. “An hour, maybe a few.”

“I can’t stay here all night,” Leonardo says. “Regina’s already going to be sick with worry.”

Primo huffs out a cloud of smoke, rolls his eyes. “Fine. I’ll handle it.”

Leonardo hesitates. “Primo—”

“I’ll fucking handle it, I said.” Primo doesn’t raise his voice, but his tone makes it clear that he doesn’t want an argument. 

“Fine,” Leonardo says. “We’ll talk tomorrow morning, at the office?”

Primo waves a hand. “Yes, yes.” Then he smirks. “Don’t worry, baby lion.”

Leonardo is, in fact, very worried—but if Primo was likely to kill Paul, he wouldn’t have wasted the effort of getting him inside the house, and he’d have done it while Paul was unconscious. Of that much Leonardo is certain.

He tells himself that Paul is just an aimless rich kid who’s fried his brain with club drugs, and for whatever reason that’s led him here. That’s all it is, or at least, that’s all Leonardo hopes it is—for Paul’s sake. 

———

It comes back to Paul in flashes—the bar, Leonardo, the trunk of a car, weirdly and horrifyingly familiar—but he has no recollection of the place he wakes up in. He smells leather, and that’s the couch, he thinks, and there’s a dim light coming from the corner. Everything is still blurry—nothing has an edge. 

He tries to sit up, but he only manages to push himself to his elbows before a wave of nauseous dizziness stops him in his tracks.

The room darkens, and he looks up—then he realizes the light hasn’t changed, it’s just been blocked. He’s eye-level with someone’s thighs. 

“Hello, Paul,” they say, and the synapses in his brain aren’t firing like they should be, like he’s on a ten-second delay, but he’d recognize that voice anywhere.

He looks up, and it’s just as he thought—as he knew. Paul opens his mouth, but he doesn’t know what to say.

Primo slaps him, not particularly hard, but Paul still feels the entire room flip upside down.

“Why are you in Calabria?” Primo asks.

Paul just stares, still open-mouthed, and the room slowly rights itself. Primo’s hand raises again, and before he can think about it, Paul says, “For you.”

Instead of slapping him, Primo grabs him by the hair, grip tight but not pulling, though the threat hangs heavy.

“What,” he hisses, voice low.

“I came to see you,” Paul says, and even though he didn’t know it before now, he knows it’s true. What else was he expecting to find when he told the cabbie to bring him here? 

“Why?” Primo demands, giving his hair a tug. 

“I don’t know. I was back in Italy. I’m outta money. I came here.” 

Primo watches him through narrowed eyes. “You came here.”

“Yeah,” Paul says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He can’t explain himself. All he knows is the order of events—Italy, drugs, out of money, back to Calabria.

Abruptly, Primo releases him. “Follow me,” he says, and Paul does, but the room spins so badly that he’s going to be sick. Luckily, Primo’s led him to a bathroom, and Paul collapses over the toilet, throwing up mostly bile. He doesn’t remember the last time he ate. Was it yesterday, or the day before that?

When he finishes, he sits back, leaning against the bathtub. Primo reaches past him and turns on the water. 

“Get in,” he tells him.

Paul can’t remember the last time he did this, either, so he doesn’t protest. He strips out of his clothes, aware of Primo’s eyes on him but more concerned with not getting sick again. 

Half-heartedly, he scrubs at himself with the soap sitting on the edge of the tub as he tries to ignore the strong sense memory it provokes, tries not to think about how now he’s going to smell like Primo.

Primo just watches Paul’s sorry attempt to clean himself, impassive. “Enough,” he says when he’s apparently satisfied, and throws down a towel. Paul stands and wraps it around himself. It feels soft, new, unexpected. 

Still dripping water, he follows Primo without being told. They enter a bedroom, and while he can’t pick out any personal artifacts, Paul just knows that it’s Primo’s, just like he knows now that this is Primo’s house. 

Primo gives him a pair of gray knit pants and a white undershirt. Paul puts them on as he watches Primo lock the door, and while it looks like the start of a horror movie, it doesn’t feel like one.

The dizzy spells are coming less frequently now, but Paul’s legs are still shaking with the effort of standing upright, so he sits down on the corner of the bed, waiting. Primo throws one of the pillows on the floor, where it’s soon joined by the duvet. 

“You sleep down there,” Primo tells him, and Paul begins to move, but then Primo has him by the hair again, having gripped him before Paul’s sluggish brain could catch the motion. 

“Try anything, I will fucking burn you alive, you understand?” Primo gives his head a little shake for emphasis.

“I understand,” Paul says, and Primo lets go. 

“Your English has gotten pretty good,” Paul adds before he can think better of it, and he sinks to the floor as fast as he can. He cocoons himself in the duvet, hoping that if he makes himself small enough he can avoid Primo’s wrath.

The silence in the room is heavy, oppressive, before Primo snorts. Paul peeks out of the bedding to see Primo strip down to his underwear and fall into his bed, covered with only his sheet. He notices Paul watching. 

“Shut the fuck up and go to sleep,” he says, so Paul closes his eyes, thinking that this arrangement beats a cave floor, at least.


	2. small and soft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My hand slipped

Despite his hurry, Leonardo accepts the eggs and toast Regina pushes on him. She looks at him while she butters her bread, full of concern that she blinks away when Francesco joins them at the breakfast table.

He’d told her everything—or, at least, what little there was to tell. He burdened her with yet another secret, and she had a million questions. He had no answers, but he hopes that will change today.

He kisses them both goodbye, his wife and his son, and he heads to the port office.

Primo’s already there, with a half-empty coffee cup on his desk and a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his fingers.

Leonardo closes the door and sits across from him. Primo, who’d only glanced up when he entered, continues poring over the newspaper.

“The women are striking in Iceland,” he says idly.

Leonardo slaps his palm on the desk. “Who fucking cares? Primo—what did you—what’s happened with the Getty boy?”

“Nothing,” Primo says, not looking up.

“Nothing, nothing, what does that mean, nothing?”

Primo sighs, pure affect, and smooths the paper down across the desk. He leans back in his chair with a dramatic stretch. 

“He’s at my house. Probably shitting his brains out, or about to be.”

The second part is to be expected, but the first is almost beyond comprehension. Leonardo moves on to a different, hopefully more enlightening, line of questioning. “Did you speak with him?”

“Yes.” 

“And? What is he doing here, hm?”

Primo just looks at him, eyes narrowed. Then he grins, slow and spreading. “He’s here to see me.”

Leonardo gapes at him, stares at Primo’s smirk like he might find answers there. “Why?”

“He doesn’t know.” Primo flicks the butt of his cigarette into his coffee. “But I’ll find out.”

And Leonardo has no idea what that means, but before he can even form a coherent question, Primo says, “While he’s here, he can make himself useful. Francesco needs an English tutor, eh?” He raises an eyebrow.

“You’ve lost it,” Leonardo tells him. 

“Why not?”

“I don’t want Francesco knowing he’s here—or making him, making him see—” What’s happened to that boy, Leonardo thinks. Francesco tried to help him, but Paul has ended up back where he started—here, with Primo.

Of course, in Primo’s mind, this is probably some grand lesson for Francesco, though what that is, exactly, Leonardo isn’t sure. 

“I speak English. I taught _you_ all the English you know. I can teach my own son,” he insists. 

“But you’re not teaching Francesco, huh? His English is shit.”

Leonardo bristles. “We’ve been busy.” 

“Exactly,” Primo says, pushing his chair back. “You have better things to do, mister accountant.” He splays his legs, one hand draped over a thick thigh, and grins. 

Leonardo storms out, determined not to give Primo the reaction he’s looking for, and then he realizes he already has. 

———

Paul wakes up shaking, covered in sweat. There’s light streaming in from the window—so much so that he thinks it must be close to noon, maybe later. 

He pushes himself to stand and looks at the bed, the dented pillow and crumpled sheets. He reaches out a tentative hand and hesitates for a moment, then feels the mattress. It’s cold.

He doesn’t feel hungry, but some self-preservation instinct—funny, he didn’t think he had those anymore—kicks in and tells him he needs to eat, so he drags himself to the door. He wonders if he’s been locked in here, but the knob turns. 

He stumbles through the other rooms of the house (several of which are empty) and ends up in the kitchen. Primo’s gone, and Paul wonders if he should be offended that Primo sees him as so nonthreatening that he’s been left to roam free, unsupervised. 

Another dizzy spell hits him then, leaving him slumped over the counter, and he’s forced to admit that right now, he’s not a threat to a spider. 

When he can stand, Paul starts digging through the cabinets and the refrigerator. He finds several bottles of wine and brandy, a bit of moldy cheese, almost ten oranges, a few cans of beans, and a loaf of half-eaten focaccia bread. 

He leaves the alcohol and the beans, but he brings the rest to the tiny table, which is covered with newspapers and a few books—an English dictionary, something that looks like it’s to do with boats, and a novel he’s never heard of. 

Paul finds a knife and slices the bread (badly, with unsteady hands) and cuts the moldiest bits off the cheese. He finishes two oranges before the cramps start.

In between rounds of shitting his brains out, he lays on the bathroom floor, shivering and sweating at the same time. 

It’s not his first withdrawal, or even his fifth, but it might be one of the worst, though he thinks that every time. He curls in on himself and thinks that he wouldn’t be here if the old man had just answered the fucking phone—or if he’d just given him the six thousand dollars he needed two years ago. A bunch of people would still be alive, and he and his mom would still be talking.

Maybe he wouldn’t have needed that six grand in the first place if Getty Sr. just had a heart. He thinks about all the stories his dad told him, fables, or parables, maybe, about the old man’s meanness. He’d never experienced it much first-hand, until he showed up begging for money and realized the only way to get it was to hurt himself. 

In one of the stories his dad told, Paul’s grandmother was pregnant with him, Paul’s father. Old man Getty insisted on keeping his planned business trip to Italy, and he’d dragged his wife, well-past the point of showing, along with him. 

His grandfather wanted to see Mount Vesuvius, the undoing of the civilization he idealized. He forced Paul’s grandmother to go with him, and after hiking more than two miles to the base of the crater, she was panting for breath and begging for a slower descent. 

According to Paul’s, his grandfather told her that if she complained one more time, he’d push her into the crater—down into one thousand feet of nothingness. 

If he were there now, at the top of Vesuvius, Paul would willingly throw himself into that crater. 

He’s sweat so badly that his clothes are nearly soaked. Once the cramping lets up, he runs the bath. He turns to the water to nearly steaming and floats in it as long as he can stand, then he scrubs every inch of himself.

He grabs the nearest towel he can see. It’s still a little damp, which is unpleasant, and he wonders if it’s the towel he used last night, or if Primo used it this morning. He goes back into the bedroom in search of clothes. He paws through the drawers but he’s stymied, unable to find anything similar to what Primo gave him last night and unsure of what’s off-limits, if anything is. In the end, he throws on a pair of underwear and a button-down shirt, both of which are big on him. 

Paul does another circuit around the house, looking for a clock, but he doesn’t find one. He starts feeling dizzy again and goes back into the bedroom, where he sits against the bed, legs pulled to his chest, duvet wrapped around his waist. 

He isn’t there long before he hears the door, footsteps in the hall. Primo appears in the doorway. He looks at Paul, face blank.

“Hey,” Paul says. He feels like he should say something else—how was your day, thanks for not killing me—but Primo stalks forward and tugs Paul up by his arm. 

He gives Paul a once-over, clearly noticing the new outfit, if it could be called that. 

“Sorry, man, I uh, I kinda sweat through the other clothes.” 

Paul thinks his gaze catches on the underwear, hovers somewhere around Paul’s crotch, but maybe he’s imaging it. 

Primo still has one of his enormous hands wrapped around Paul’s bicep, and he leads him out of the bedroom and back to the tiny kitchen table.

He pulls out a chair and Paul hastens to sit. There’s a paper sack on the counter, which Primo grabs and tosses on the table.

“Eat,” he tells him, and sits down across from Paul.

Tentatively, Paul opens the sack. It’s a to-go container of pasta, and he feels strangely relieved. He doesn’t know what he was expecting—a severed head, or part of one? But it’s just carbonara, and it smells amazing.

While Paul digs in, Primo lights a cigarette.

“So,” he says, and Paul looks up, trying to suck an errant noodle into his mouth. “I have a job for you.”

Paul stares, fighting to swallow his pasta, but it feels like his throat’s closed. 

Primo taps the dictionary. “You’re going to be a teacher.” 

Confusion with a touch of hysteria helps Paul push the panic away. He laughs a little, waiting for Primo to say more, but he doesn’t. “Uh. What?”

Primo doesn’t answer, just flaps a hand at the pasta. “Is good?”

“Yeah,” Paul says. He nods vigorously, takes another bite, and tries to pretend that the pressure of being stared at while he eats doesn’t hinder his appetite. 

———

A week ago, Leonardo had been so desperate to prevent this encounter that he’d forced Paul into his trunk. It was a wasted effort; now he and Francesco sit in Leonardo’s car, parked outside of Primo’s house, while Leonardo struggles to explain what’s going to happen.

“Primo wants you to have an English tutor,” Leonardo begins. “I’ll bring you here for lessons after school every Thursday.” 

“Okay,” Francesco says easily, and Leonardo supposes he should not be surprised—if he told his son Primo wanted him to learn ballet, he’d do it without complaint. 

The next bit, though, is trickier.

“You remember the Getty boy, Paul?” He tries to keep his tone casual. He doesn’t think it’s working. 

Francesco frowns at the question, of course, because how could he forget the boy whose ear he severed? “Yes, papa.” 

“He will be your tutor.” 

“What? Why is he here? I thought—I thought they paid. That’s why we moved here,” he insists, like Leonardo’s trying to tell him the last two years have somehow been a lie. 

“They did, they did. He, ah, turned up in the village, about a week ago. We don’t know why.” 

“Is there going to be another ransom?”

“No, no,” Leonardo assures him. Whatever Paul is right now, he’s not their captive. And it’s not as though Leonardo expects a second ransom will be successful, not when the first was so hard-won.

If Primo were here, he’d say it’s because they don’t need the Gettys’ money now, not anymore. And he would be right.

“So what,” Francesco asks, face wrinkled with confusion. “Now he lives in Primo’s house?”

“He is staying there, for now.” Leonardo hesitates, then says, “He has problems, with drugs. They made him very sick. So he’s been getting better.” If Regina were here, she would laugh. Very bold of Leonardo to paint Primo and himself, the gatekeepers of nearly all Europe’s cocaine, as good Samaritans helping a young man overcome his addiction. 

This bizarre explanation doesn’t appear to hold much weight with Francesco either, but he’s already learned not to ask too many questions. 

“Let’s go,” Leonardo says.

He doesn’t bother knocking, just lets himself in. The house is unlocked, as always, because Primo never leaves anything of value there. Guns, drugs, documents—it’s all either kept at the office, or in his car, or stashed away in a thousand other hiding places. It occurs to Leonardo that Paul is probably the most expensive thing in the house right now. 

The young man in question is apparently waiting for them, seated on Primo’s expensive and barely-used leather couch, his coltish legs crossed beneath him. He looks better than the last time Leonardo saw him—well, both of the last times Leonardo saw him, for that matter. He’s still skinny, and he’s drowning in clothes that must be Primo’s, but his eyes are alert, no longer red, and his skin looks healthy, too, not sweaty or clammy or ghastly pale. 

“Hey,” Paul says. He smiles, revealing all of his big, white teeth. 

“Hello,” Francesco replies, defaulting to an oddly formal tone, giving away his nervousness. 

“Go to the kitchen, get out your books,” Leonardo tells him, pushing him forward gently. He doesn’t know that Francesco will actually need any sort of supplies or materials—and he’s willing to bet Paul doesn’t know that, either—but he’s determined to make these lessons pay off in some small way, even if not the one Primo intended.

He watches Paul, who uncurls from the couch and stands, barefoot, arms crossed a little defensively as he looks back at Leonardo with wide eyes. 

“I, um, don’t really have any experience, you know, tutoring. But I’m gonna do my best, I’ll figure it out,” Paul tells him in that earnest, almost pleading way of his. 

“It’s an important learning opportunity for Francesco,” Leonardo says, but he’s not talking about the English lessons. “I want him to go to university. The first in our family.”

Paul blinks. “Oh, cool, right on.” 

“He is young. He doesn’t see the value of it.” He pauses, waits, but Paul is still looking at him expectantly. 

Leonardo sighs. “You can help him understand this, yes?”

“Oh. I mean…I haven’t gone to college, either, you know. I kinda got kicked out of a bunch of schools.”

For the first time, Leonardo feels like slapping him. “Then do the opposite of what your teachers did,” he tells him, and leaves. 

———

Paul wakes up to noise from elsewhere in the house. He can’t imagine it’s anyone but Primo, even though Primo spends more nights than not away—where, Paul doesn’t know and can’t begin to guess. There’s no pattern he’s been able to detect, either, so he spends every night on the floor, in case Primo does come home and crawl into his bed. 

Paul wraps the duvet around himself—he’s only wearing a pair of Primo’s underwear, and the house is cold—and pads into the hallway. 

The bathroom door is open. Primo’s over the sink, washing his hands. There’s a small kit out on the counter with peroxide and bandages. He goes still when he sees Paul through the mirror. 

“Are you okay?” Paul asks.

Primo huffs a little laugh. “Don’t worry about me, hippie.” 

Paul watches for a moment as Primo wraps his knuckles, which are raw and red. He looks up again, and they make eye contact for a second before Paul hurries off into the kitchen. He sits at the table for lack of anything else to do, looking over the additional newspapers that have accumulated, interspersed with the lined pieces of notebook paper he’s had Francesco use for his writing exercises. 

Primo surfaces from the bathroom and takes an orange from the refrigerator. Somehow, there are always oranges, even when there’s nothing else. 

“Hey,” Paul says, frowning at a front page. “Is this today’s?” He holds up the paper. 

Primo glances up from peeling his orange. “Yesterday’s.”

“Then today’s my birthday,” Paul says, and instantly wishes he hadn’t. Can it be called deja vu, he wonders, when it’s more than just the feeling of having done something before? Or is it just history repeating itself? 

Primo says nothing, just keeps peeling the orange, eating sections of it as he goes. When he finishes, he shrugs on his leather jacket.

“Don’t be bad,” he tells Paul, and leaves him wondering what the hell that even means.

Paul catches up on the papers, though he only gets the gist of most of the news stories, then he spends an hour planning Francesco’s next lesson. He’s not sure if it’s any good—it probably isn’t—but he likes doing it.

He eats an orange, takes a bath, and finds some new clothes, selected almost at random, since he’s gotten the impression Primo doesn’t really give a shit what he takes to wear. He sprawls on the couch and loses hours doodling in the notebook Francesco left. 

It’s dark outside when Primo comes back, a paper sack in either hand. His eyes sweep over Paul. 

“Hey,” Paul says, pushing himself up from off his elbows. 

Primo heads into the kitchen without comment. Paul closes the notebook and follows him.

One of the bags is on the table, and Paul catches a whiff of a familiar smell. He doesn’t know where this food comes from, but he thinks it must be the same place every time. Primo brings it home every couple of days. He never eats any himself, and there are always leftovers that Paul makes last until Primo brings more home. 

Without waiting to be told, Paul opens the sack. It’s alfredo, mouthwateringly creamy, and as he pulls it out his fingers brush over another, smaller box. It’s a cannoli. 

Primo’s leaned up against the counter next to the second paper bag, watching Paul with his usual blatant intensity.

Paul grins and turns back to his food. He only gets through a third of the pasta, but he eats the entire cannoli. A loud pop almost makes him choke on the last bite.

Heart racing, he swallows and looks over to Primo. There’s an overflowing bottle of Prosecco in his hands, a cork resting several paces away. 

Primo drinks straight from the bottle as he comes to stand over Paul. “Tanti auguri,” he says, and holds it out.

When Paul reaches to take it, Primo pulls it back. 

Deja vu, Paul thinks. He drops his hands, and Primo brings the bottle forward again, tipping it against Paul’s lips. 

It’s dry and crisp, and after weeks of sobriety it feels almost as good as a hit. A little dribbles from the corner of Paul’s mouth when Primo takes the bottle away. 

Primo’s eyes are dark craters ringed with luminous cobalt as he brings his thumb to wipe at the Prosecco.

Berto told him that people pushed from the Tarpeian Rock lived for just long enough to feel pain from the fall. Would it be the same, falling into Vesuvius? 

Paul licks at Primo’s thumb. He hears a small, surprised intake of breath, then he feels a hand grasping his chin. 

He falls a thousand feet.

Primo’s kisses are wet and messy. His teeth leave bruises and his mustache rubs a stinging burn. One of his hands fists in Paul’s hair, drags back his head, exposes the line of his neck, and Paul wonders if Primo could rip out his throat with those bloodied hands, how bad it would hurt and for how long. 

Naked in Primo’s bed, Paul is grounded by the weight of him. It feels like every part of Primo is twice as thick as the same part of Paul. Primo lifts Paul’s legs to wrap around his waist, and they rub against each other like that until Paul comes. It doesn’t take long, not because it feels amazing—there’s barely any friction—but because of how primal the whole thing is. Paul thinks they could be the first humans on the planet, predating drugs or money or language or art, just two people experiencing this terrible pull, this overwhelming urge. 

While Paul thinks about primordial need, Primo nudges his legs closed. He scrapes his fingers through the come on Paul’s belly and smears it into the crevice of Paul’s thighs and over his own cock. 

Paul’s legs feel boneless, but he tries to keep them clenched as Primo fucks his thighs. He runs a hand over Primo’s flank, trails his fingers to the cleft of his ass. A girl he met at Treetops did this to him once, pressed at the patch of skin between his balls and his hole while she blew him, and it was one of the best orgasms of his life.

It takes a bit of fumbling to get at the right spot—he can’t really see where he’s prodding, and he’s also a little afraid that Primo’s going to rip his hand off—but he knows he’s found it when Primo lets out a low groan. He keeps up the pressure and Primo falls forward, bites Paul’s shoulder so hard _he_ almost screams, and comes all over his thighs. 

Primo rolls off him almost immediately. He lays on his back and pants, watching Paul from the corner of his eye. 

Paul leans over and grabs his pillow from the floor. He sets it next to Primo’s and curls up on his side. 

Before he falls asleep, he feels the sheet being pulled over him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're enjoying this nonsense, I'd love to hear from you. Also, I'm always looking for people to dive deeper into the Trust madness with over at [Tumblr](https://dreamtiwasanarchitect.tumblr.com/).


	3. flesh and blood

As Leonardo lets himself in to Primo’s house, Francesco’s laugh, newly deep, echoes from the kitchen. He trails after it, such a rare sound, so sparingly heard at home, as Francesco is at the height of his teenage moodiness. He finds the two boys—two young men, he supposes—as he always does, clustered at the small table, bent over open books and notebooks.

Though he was uncertain of the arrangement at first, Francesco now looks forward to Thursdays. Leonardo is just glad Paul still has such long hair. It makes it easy to ignore what isn’t there. 

“What are you laughing about, hm?” he asks, surprising them both. Paul’s head shoots up, and Francesco twists around in his seat.

“Nothing,” Francesco says quickly. Paul gives Leonardo a small, apologetic smile. 

“You’re working hard?”

“Yes, papa.” Francesco rolls his eyes and begins to close his books.

“He is, really,” Paul adds earnestly. Leonardo wants to ask what made him think he was only inquiring after Francesco, but he bites his tongue.

Instead, he waves Francesco out to the car. “Go on. I want a word with your tutor,” he tells him.

Francesco looks momentarily mutinous, but he goes without a fight. Leonardo takes the seat he vacated.

“So,” Leonardo says, leaning forward over his clasped hands. “Things are going well?”

“Yeah, yeah. Um, Francesco’s really smart, and you know, he’s a really good kid, too.”

Leonardo fights to keep a straight face. “You’re what, eighteen now?” 

Paul frowns a little. “Nineteen,” he says, sounding exactly that young.

“Francesco will be sixteen next month,” Leonardo tells him.

Paul shrugs and fiddles with a pencil. “I just hope my kid turns out like that. That’s all.”

Leonardo nods absently, sparing a thought for Paul’s future child, the next in a line of little billionaires. Then Paul looks up, and Leonardo sees his face—contemplative, worried—and he realizes Paul isn’t speaking hypothetically.

He stares. “You…”

Paul nods. “He’s almost a year old now.” 

The question that’s been clawing at the back of Leonardo’s throat for nearly two months now finally rips through. “Why are you here?” he demands. 

“I—” Paul swallows. “I came to film a movie.” 

Leonardo snorts. “Not in Reggio Calabria.” 

Paul twists the pencil between his fingers. “No, it was Rome—it got canceled once I was already here. I didn’t have the cash for a flight home.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. Why did you come here?”

Paul looks up at him, wide-eyed as ever, but he doesn’t say anything.

“What do you want, huh? Money?”

Paul shakes his head. “No,” he says, and his voice is unexpectedly steely.

“Then what? You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe for you and it’s not good for us.”

Paul drops the pencil and runs a hand through his hair, the right side, giving Leonardo a perfect view of what Francesco—what _he_ —did. He can’t tell if Paul does it intentionally or not.

The boy sighs. “When I was a little kid, my mom read _The Lord of the Rings_ to me. Did you ever read it?”

Leonardo rubs at his eyes. “No.”

“You gotta, man,” Paul says. “It’s great. Kinda some hippie shit, but it’s epic. Swords, magic, monsters. The hero goes on this quest, right, this journey. And he goes a long way from home and his fulfills his quest. And then he goes back home.” Paul stops to take a breath, and Leonardo raises an eyebrow. 

“But,” Paul continues, “when he gets home it’s—it’s not the same. Things are different. He’s different. It can’t be like—like what it was. He can go home, like, you know, physically, but—not in his heart, or whatever.” 

Paul stares at Leonardo, eyes glassy and pleading, like he’s willing him to understand. 

“This isn’t a fucking book,” Leonardo tells him quietly. “There’s no quest. No heroes. You understand?” He stands, the scrape of the chair ringing through the quiet of the house. “You go home. Go home to your son.” 

———

Paul is asleep—alone, in Primo’s bed, where he’s been every night since his birthday, still alone more often than not—when he’s shaken awake.

He suffers a moment’s alarm before blinking open his eyes. Even before they can adjust to the darkness, his other senses tell him who it is. The large hand, cool with the chill of the outdoors on his bare shoulder, and the scent, cigarettes and a day’s worth of musk, and under that, the soap they share, gives Primo away.

“Hey,” Paul says, his own voice scratchy with sleep.

Now he can make out the glint of Primo’s eyes, the whiteness of his teeth. He’s still dressed, leather jacket and all. Dimly, Paul wonders if there’s some sort of trouble. “Everything okay?”

Primo ignores him, just yanks down the bedding and pushes Paul back into the mattress. Paul’s only wearing underwear—his own pair, for once, after a recent round of laundry—and Primo hooks a finger in the band and drags them down to pool around Paul’s ankles. Almost without thinking, Paul kicks them off and spreads his legs, retracing a dance’s familiar steps.

Primo looks at him, something hungry in his eyes that sets off warning sirens in Paul’s brain, but his flight instinct has been dulled by years of running towards trouble instead of away from it, so he doesn’t move, just waits.

Primo slinks forward—almost pounces—and swallows Paul’s cock.

“Fuck!” Paul hisses. 

Most of their sexual encounters have been a repeat of their first, variations on a theme, with the exception of one night, when Primo came home early and plied Paul with expensive wine. Then he took him to bed and opened Paul on three of those huge fingers before fucking him. Paul cried after, not because he didn’t like it, but because it had been such a mindfuck, feeling someone physically inside him like that. Primo made a face, watched as Paul rubbed at his eyes and tried to explain that he wasn’t upset, it wasn’t bad crying, but Primo either didn’t understand or believe him, because he hasn’t tried to fuck Paul since. 

Now, Primo is sucking and licking his cock with a calculated sort of aggression. A planned offensive. He’s good at this, Paul thinks. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised, but he is. 

Paul tries not to push up into his mouth too much, but he can’t help his hips twitching a little. He fists one hand in his own curls, and the other falls down to thread through Primo’s thick, silky hair.

Primo makes a little noise and looks up at him through his eyelashes. Paul stills, waiting for the fallout, hand frozen but tense, until Primo closes his eyes and resumes sucking Paul’s cock like he’s getting paid to do it.

Minutes—or maybe only seconds—later, Paul gasps out, “I’m—I’m gonna come,” and expects Primo to pull off, but he doesn’t.

He licks his red lips as he gazes up at Paul, who’s still trying to catch his breath. “Fuck,” he says. “That was, that was really good.” He swallows. “Uh, can I—” His hands drift up to Primo’s jacket, slow, telegraphed movements. When Primo doesn’t move, Paul pushes the jacket off, then starts working on the shirt.

Primo lets Paul undress him. He doesn’t make any move to help the process along, just watches him with intent eyes. 

When Primo’s naked, Paul crawls between his legs. He looks up as Primo reclines against the pillows, suddenly self-conscious. He’s never done this before, but he licks at Primo’s cock and is buoyed by the sound of Primo sucking in a breath. 

Eventually, he tries taking all of Primo in his mouth, but it’s not as easy as Primo made it seem. Primo grabs his curls and holds his head in place, feeding his cock down Paul’s throat until he gags a little. 

Paul’s jaw is getting sore, but he fights to keep it relaxed, to keep taking Primo deeper. Primo strokes his fingers across Paul’s throat, and the gesture sparks a jolt of pleasure low in his belly. He makes a little noise in the back of his throat and Primo moans. 

He doesn’t get any warning except the rabbiting of Primo’s hips before Primo comes in his mouth. 

Paul wipes at his mouth. “Was—was that okay?”

Primo quirks an eyebrow. “Mm.” He leans over the bed to dig his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. He lights one and passes it to Paul before lighting his own.

They sit side-by-side, sucking their cigarettes. Their bare legs are touching, and it somehow feels more intimate than swallowing each others’ come.

“Allora,” Primo says. “Tell me what it was like.”

“What was what like?”

“Being a Getty.” 

“What, like, growing up?” 

Primo shrugs as if to say, sure. 

“I don’t know,” Paul demurs, but when Primo just looks at him, he admits, “I was scared a lot. To go out. I could tell people were, you know…jealous. Made it hard to trust anyone. My family wasn’t really close—my dad wasn’t around and we don’t talk. I’ve only even met my granddad like, seven times.”

He takes another drag of his cigarette. “They don’t really care about anything, you know?”

“Money, no?”

Paul laughs, bitter. “Yeah. Money. You know what my granddad says? ‘The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.’” 

“Che cosa?” Primo’s frowning at him.

Paul shakes his head. “It’s not important.” He stubs out his cigarette and curls up on his side, knees pressing against Primo’s thigh. 

As his eyes close, he hears the click of Primo lighting another cigarette. 

———

Paul is planning for his next lesson with Francesco and eating an orange when Primo gets home. He doesn’t have food, just an envelope he drops on the table in front of Paul. 

“What’s this?” Paul peers up at Primo, who just looks back at him, face inscrutable, and Paul interprets that as his cue. Trying to avoid touching the paper with the sticky fingers of his left hand, he opens the envelope and works out the paper inside.

It’s a plane ticket. 

“What is this?” he asks, even though he can see that’s for a flight that’s tonight, a one-way trip to California.

“Get your shit,” Primo says, gesturing. “You have a plane to catch.”

“But—” I don’t get it, Paul thinks. What did I do. The words die on his tongue. Primo’s eyes are sharp, his expression stormy, and Paul knows the signs of his ire. 

He tries to make himself move, but he’s frozen, incredibly confused and a little afraid. “Primo,” he begins, hoping that the correct response will follow, but Primo cuts him off.

“We’re done here, hippie. Time for you to go home. Get back to your kid.” Primo is almost sneering now, and shame spikes in his chest. 

Leonardo must have told him, Paul realizes. 

“Go,” Primo says, and Paul goes into the bedroom because he can tell the next thing Primo says will be a shout. He changes into the clothes he was wearing when he first showed up with robotic motions, brain on autopilot. He has nothing else to gather. He stands in the bedroom and, on impulse, grabs the duvet from the bed and presses it to his nose. He breathes in the smell of it—Primo and himself—for as long as he dares.

The ride to Naples International Airport is quiet. Paul almost considered crawling into the backseat for old time’s sake, maybe even making a joke of it, but the sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach stops him. He sits in the passenger side, feet on the seat, arms wrapped around his legs. Primo smokes and turns the radio up just loud enough that it deters any sort of conversation. 

When they pull up the terminal, Primo puts the car in park and turns to Paul expectantly. 

Just like before, it feels wrong that this should be the end. It’s too soon, too anticlimactic. 

Paul wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what. Thanks for not killing me. Thanks for taking care of me. Please don’t make me go. 

Primo’s hand is hanging off the steering wheel. Paul slips his own into it and threads their fingers together. He tries to commit the sight to memory. After a long moment, Primo shakes him off.

“Get out,” Primo tells him softly.

Paul leans in and kisses him. He wants it to be wet and messy like it always is, and big and passionate and befitting of the last time, but Primo barely kisses him back. 

“Okay,” Paul says when he pulls away. “Bye.”

Primo shifts in his seat, flexes his hand on the wheel. “Go, Paul,” he says, and his voice is tense. 

The thought of returning home—back to California, to family and obligations and the unbearable burden of existing as a Getty—makes him want to scream. If he could, Paul would stay here forever, being no one except for Primo’s lover and Francesco’s tutor, but it’s not up to him. It never is. 

So he goes.

———

Leonardo is alone at the office until after noon, at which point Primo blows in like a tempest. He smells stale, and he’s wearing his sunglasses and the same clothes Primo saw him in yesterday.

Primo heads straight for his office and closes the door. Leonardo stares at it and wonders how long this black mood will last.

He feels responsible—he _is_ responsible. He told Primo what he’d learned from Paul, and more than that, he’d told Primo he was a fool, playing house with some kid who’s just running away from his own responsibilities. He accused him of thinking with his dick—because Leonardo can always tell when Primo’s getting laid, having had some personal experience in the matter—and warned him the whole thing was bound to end badly sooner or later, and if he was smart he’d end it now, on his own terms.

And Primo had listened, which he hadn’t been entirely prepared for. 

There’s the problem of explaining what’s happened to Francesco, but Leonard has a couple days before he’ll need to worry about that. Right now he’s more concerned about Primo—whatever he did on whatever bender he was on last night, for one.

He feels some nagging guilt for Paul, too. Leonardo is confident that sending him away was the right choice as far as he and Primo and the business are concerned, and no matter how young, a father has certain responsibilities to his son. Still, he wonders what will become of Paul. Perhaps he should read those books.

As the afternoon stretches into evening, Leonardo decides Primo’s had enough time to lick his wounds—whatever they are—in private. He knocks on the office door and lets himself in after a moment when there’s no response. 

Primo’s leaned back in his chair. He paints a lonely picture, staring off into space, one hand resting on his desk, the other holding an unlit cigarette.

Leonardo clears his throat “He’s on his way home?”

Primo glances over to him. “Yes, yes.”

“It was the right choice,” Leonardo says. 

Primo just hums. “Yes. I’m so lucky to have you, and all of your many, many years of wisdom.”

Leonardo ignores the sarcasm and smiles. “You are, you know.” He steps around the desk between them and puts a hand on Primo’s shoulder. He squeezes, feeling the warmth of Primo’s skin beneath his shirt and jacket. 

“Come for dinner tomorrow,” Leonardo tells him. “Regina will make arancini.” 

Primo looks up at him. His eyes are bloodshot, offset with dark circles, and Leonardo can’t stop the habitual movement of his hand cupping Primo’s neck, can’t still his fingers stroking at the hair behind Primo’s ear.

Primo’s eyes flutter shut. “All right,” he agrees. His hand comes up to cover Leonardo’s. 

They stay like that for a long moment, and Leonardo wonders if he’s going to kiss Primo, or if Primo is going to kiss him. For a second, it seems inevitable, but then Primo’s hand drops and his eyes blink open. He stretches, just a small flex of his shoulders, and turns to the papers on his desk. 

Leonardo gives Primo’s shoulder another squeeze, then sees himself out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all enjoyed! I love to hear from you. Catch me on [Tumblr](https://dreamtiwasanarchitect.tumblr.com/), often screaming about this show.


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